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nected the trees together in the same manner that garlands were formed, or wreaths of laurel disposed for a festival. Juvenal, alluding to the splendid Hippodrome of Domitian, exclaims,

In vain the long and stately colonnade

Tires his sleek mules within its ample shade1.

Pignorius, an antiquary of Padua, discovered the following inscription, which informed the deambulator when he had walked a mile in the garden:

IN. HOC. POMARIO. GESTATIONIS.

PER. CIRCVITVM. ITVM .

ET. REDITVM . QVINQVIENS. EFFICIT.

PASSVS. MILLE.'

That part of the garden devoted to exercise was also called Gestatio, and Ambulatio'. Another

1 Badham's Translation.

"The Anglo-Saxon mila, our English mile, is derived from mille passus, the thousand Roman paces; and there is little doubt that they are one and the same measure.

3 The Romans were fond of exercise as conducive to health, and had at their country seats a covered place in which they could either ride on horseback or be carried in

pavilion wholly of marble, had a green floor, which gave it the appearance of a natural grotto, and the openings being shaded with dense foliage, produced a gloomy effect within the apartment; round it were marble seats, and a water organ of simple and ingenious mechanism'. These hydraulic organs are still very common in the gardens of Italy, which are generally laid out in formal taste: the Aldobrandini Villa at Tivoli presents an existing illustration of the description of an ancient Roman garden, and abounds, like its proto, type, with avenues, clipped hedges, basins, fountains, cascades, caverns, and a water organ; here a hundred tricks are played off by

a litter whenever the extremity of the weather prevented exercise abroad. This was called Gestatio, and resembled the Riding-house of the present day, being built up and closed on both sides, to avoid the sun in summer and the rain in winter. Lord Orrery's Notes to Pliny's Epistles, vol. i. p. 10. The gardens of the Villa Borghese, near Rome, contain a fine modern example of the Hippodrome.

Pliny's Letters, lib. v. epist. 6; and Vitruvius, lib. x. cap. 13.

means of concealed streamlets suddenly sprinkling the visitors'. Statues of illustrious men were by no means an unusual ornament of the Roman gardens, as well as the marble Hemicycle or semicircular seat. Exotics that remained exposed during the whole summer, were in winter preserved in green-houses framed with the Lapis specularis'.

THE SPHERISTERIUM AND ALEATORIUM. The Romans prepared themselves for dinner, or principal meal, by violent exercise, which was succeeded by the bath. The more luxurious, who did not partake of athletic exercises, played at Tennis in a court erected for the purpose, or at the Discus, resembling

See also Tappen's Description of the Panfili Villa, p. 202; and Pont. Vill. p. 196.

2 Mazois' Ruines de Pompeii, tom. i. plates 3, 7, 33 and 34.

3 Pliny's Natural History, lib. xix. cap. 5; and Martial, lib. viii. epist. 14. 68.

4 When the younger Pliny mentions his Spheristerium in epist. 6. lib. v. he represents it as having several cir

Quoits, excepting that the latter is a game of skill, and the Discus was merely a trial of strength. Horace' lays down the rules of exercise :

Pursue the chase2; th' unmanag'd courser rein:

Or if the Roman war ill suit thy vein,

To Grecian revels form'd, at tennis play,
Or at the manly discus waste the day;
With vigour hurl it through the yielding air,
The sport shall make the labour less severe.

The aged and invalids amused themselves

cular divisions, in which different kinds of exercises were performed. Of these, the general and favorite amusement amongst the Greeks and Romans before they bathed, was the ball; there were four sorts of balls, the size and structure of which were not only different, but the manner and degree of exercise varied according to the age, strength and constitution of the players. The several names were the Follis, the Trigonalis, the Paganica and the Harpastum. The first is supposed to resemble the modern tennis, and the last the play of goff; the trigonalis derived its name from the triangular position of the players; and the paganica was so called because it was the common exercise of the villagers. 1 Sat. 2. lib. ii.--Francis..

2 Pliny, who was a sportsman rather by compliance than inclination, enumerates, amongst his rural expences, the

in an adjoining room called the Aleatorium, from alea, the term for dice; games of chance were also played with counters or calculi, and with black and white tesseræ1.

THE BALNEUM.

The word Balneum properly signifies a private bath. The Thermæ of the Romans were appropriated to the use of the public; and buildings of this description comprised not only libraries within their walls, but porticos, walks, and other places for exercise2.

It was a custom of the Romans to bathe only before the principal meal, and few mansions of venatoria instrumenta, the nets, spears &c. belonging to his hunting equipage, which it was necessary for a person of his rank to maintain.

1 An account of the private sports and games of the Romans, is given in Arbuthnot's Tables, chap. 14, and in Kennet's Antiquities.

2 Andrew Bacci, physician to Pope Sixtus V., in a treatise "De Thermis. Libri septem," published at Venice 1571, and again at Padua 1711, fol., has collected almost everything wanted on the subject. The first edition is rare, and the last has the addition of an eighth book.

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